FC Barcelona's quality over quantity strategy helps it gain record social media engagement

FC Barcelona powered ahead of Manchester United and Real Madrid to be named as the club with record engagement according to Blinkfire Analytics.

FC Barcelona, which boasts of around 313 million followers across all social media platforms, saw 181 million engagements in January, followed by Manchester United and Real Madrid which saw 76 million and 45 million engagements respectively.

Barcelona was also the first on each social media platform when broken down separately. The biggest difference was on Instagram, where Barcelona had the most engagements over a single month in four years.

According to the club, the very first Instagram photo of Philippe Coutinho wearing the Barcelona shirt became the most viral post in the history of club’s Instagram account. The image generated almost 2.7 million likes and over 20,000 comments. Accordingly, the account grew by around 880,000 followers in January.

The Drum spoke with Josep Vives, FC Barcelona's spokesperson who said: “Some months ago we changed the focus of our content on social networks. The goal is quality not quantity and for the fans to interact with us. The fans are at the heart of all our decisions and in the type of content that we produce.

“This idea of putting the fans first should lead us to organic growth in terms of volume and boost the media value of our publications, which will have the knock-on effect of greater value for our sponsors.”

“We have adapted long before any other club to the latest developments in making social networks more people-focused and interactive. We were the first sports club to use the YouTube Community and we will also be the first to adapt to the new Facebook and Instagram algorithm that is totally focused on providing people with the most relevant content.”